He walked her back to the shuttle sight in relative silence, although they walked side by side as much as possible along the tiny path. The backs of their fingers brushed, so close did they walk, and although the tension strung little jolts of lightning-like sensations between them, neither of them reached for the other's hand.

She called Sheppard to pick her up after they reached the crash site. Either Michael or the jungle had done some quick work at reclaiming the area. The shuttle was almost stripped of any usable circuitry, metal, anything that could be salvaged had been. The plants had taken over the rest, creeping up the sides and into the Jumper with a speed that was astonishing. A year from today it would be impossible to tell that anyone had lost their life here.

And Michael was watching her watch the Jumper wreckage. He tilted his head at her as she turned around.

"I was... thinking." She looked down. It sounded odd out loud, when she thought about telling him. "How quickly this will be concealed. Or, erased. Look..." Her hand skimmed over the surface. "The plants are already growing over."

He nodded slowly. "Soon it will all be gone," he said, fingertips moving over where her hand was a moment ago. "The planet will reclaim this part of itself."

She looked back over at him. The Wraith ships were organic, according to McKay. She wondered, for the first time, what the impact of that kind of thinking had on the way they lived their lives in the day to day. Was it a need to conserve their resources, did they recycle everything they used until it was no longer usable, or was it simply a result of their evolutionary processes? Some parts of their thinking developed from insect behavior, some parts from human. Michael tilted his head at her and she realized that she had been staring. Again.

Except he was smiling slightly this time, and his smiles were rare enough that she offered him one in return. "You're thinking about me again," he noted. "About my people. You have that look as though you've just thought of something you never considered before."

"I... oh." Teyla looked down, blushing slightly, laughing. "I hadn't realized you had been paying that much attention." And then she realized how that sounded and shook her head, smiling.

He chuckled, soft and gentle and that same quiet kindness that they had been trying for all week. "I pay attention," was all he said. But he nodded slightly to one side, and she followed his gaze.

Both their smiles fell away at the sight of another, intact Jumper some distance off. Hopefully far enough to be hard to see whether or not she was accompanied by anyone, whether there were just shapes in the foliage or whether the pilot... Sheppard... couldn't see anything. Teyla sighed. "I will try to return," she told him, turning to face him and resolutely putting her back to Sheppard and whatever he might be seeing. "But I do not know when that might be..."

"I understand."

She wanted it to be more than that. Somehow. "Then I will simply say, until next time," she decided, bringing her hands to his shoulders and touching her forehead to his. "And hope to see you again sooner rather than later. This is how we say good-bye among our people," she added, explaining the gesture.

"I... see." And he did seem to, at least enough to mirror the gesture. And it had only been meant as such, an overture of friendship, underlining her words.

The disorientation she almost attributed to having eaten nothing but barely-palatable MREs for the last week. The sudden flood of emotions that weren't hers was definitely not.

There was still the loneliness; apparently it hadn't gone but been buried deep inside. There was also a profound relief, not so much, it seemed, that she would come back as that she was not closing off immediately or offering ultimatums. Curiosity at her motives, wariness tinged with bitterness at the memories of what had been done to him. Loss, emptiness, barely filled by her presence.

Teyla gasped as she broke physical contact and stepped back, reeling from the intimacy. He looked equally startled to have been cast into that close contact, which at least meant that he hadn't tried to overwhelm her on purpose. And he looked, as much as she could decipher his expressions still, the ones that weren't familiar... he looked ashamed.

She found herself reaching up to put her hand on his cheek, the way he had done for her before. "Until next time," she told him, shying away from what that promise implied, at least for now. They both needed certainty. She needed to be a good distance away before she doubted what she was doing.

"Until next time," he murmured, and it even sounded almost steady. She hugged him tightly for a moment, and then turned to walk away.

Sheppard was waiting for her at the Jumper without expression. Or rather, since she knew him better than that, with a guarded and carefully blank expression that hid something he didn't want to share with her at the time. If he didn't know, she decided, he most likely suspected. That she was hiding something herself, even if he didn't know about Michael. And she wasn't sure he didn't, and now she was just thinking in circles.

The hug surprised them both, distracting at least her from what she had been thinking. For a moment there, at least, she just wanted to hold him and remember that she had friends, that she was cared for more than she knew (she had never forgotten that alien's words even if she had never told John either), that she had a place in the world. She could understand now, she thought, why a simple touch or embrace or a word to that effect meant so much to Michael. And why it had been so horrible when it had been taken away, countless times.

"You okay?" Sheppard half-whispered, still a little awkward about the embrace but tightening his arms around her. He sounded worried. She wondered if he had reason to.

After a moment Teyla shook her head, stepping back. "I am all right. I will be all right," she corrected herself. "The visit helped. The rituals helped."

"... Well, good." He forced a smile, and she could tell it was forced. "Let's go home."

Was there the slightest bit of emphasis there, on the word home? And if so, what did it mean?

"Let's go home," she agreed, smiling slightly and joining him in the Jumper.

He flew them home in silence, a silence that filled up all the empty spaces of the Jumper and made it very hard to breathe after a while. She hadn't thought that John could maintain that expressionless mask for as long as he did, not around her at least. All attempts at conversation were met with monosyllabic responses.

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah."

"How is Rodney?"

"Fine."

By the time they landed in the Jumper bay she had given up trying to talk to him or find out what was wrong. If Rodney was able to find it out from him, perhaps he would tell her. Really, she thought with a bit of a rueful smile, if she got him started he would tell her everything. If Rodney was able to find out. If he was able to get John to talk to him.

They were friends, though. They shared a great deal, perhaps they would share this as well?

And then Ronon was there and distracting her with one of his usual rib cracking hugs, and she laughed. "It is good to see you too."

"Place is falling apart without you," he told her, setting her down and grinning. And behind that smile was a question that she answered without putting him through the effort of asking.

"I am doing better, Ronon," she reassured him. "Going back and saying good-bye... helped." It wasn't a lie. Not really.

"I bet it did."

That was from Sheppard, and behind her, and both she and Ronon looked over at him with expressions that were varying degrees of confused and irritated. Hers more confused, Ronon's more irritated. "What's got into you?" came rumbling from above her.

Sheppard had that sort of head-tilted bemused and annoyed look he had when he'd just encountered a situation more complicated and unpleasant than he wanted. "... Nothing." He started to walk past.

"Sheppard..."

Teyla shook her head, catching Ronon's arm as he reached out to grab their friend. "He is right, Ronon. It is nothing. Let him go."

Ronon looked back and forth between them for a moment, and then something crossed his face that turned the near-anger into a tiny, knowing smirk. "Okay. Sure." He wasn't laughing, but he looked as though he wanted to when he backed away. Teyla half-glared at him, but didn't have the heart to make it a real or genuine glare. She did wonder, a little, what he was thinking.

"Oh, hey, you're back."

She looked over, a little surprised (although affectionately so) that Rodney had even noticed she was gone.

The sticks clacked against each other, their breathing rasped in their throats, flesh slapped against the mats and the wooden practice sticks. John's face was still frozen in that blank expression, although now she could read the signs of a tightened jaw and narrowed eyes that he was upset about something. She was fairly sure she knew what that something was.

"John..." She tried, in between bouts. He caught his breath and went for her again and she barely blocked it in time.

"Yeah?" he panted. Didn't say anything, or give her a chance to say anything until she had cut it short by sweeping his legs out from under him and knocking him down.

And then she didn't know what to say, and ended up waiting too long. He rose up again and attacked and this time she was angry enough, at the both of them, to defend herself to her full ability. He went up against the wall, and then he went down, and then he didn't get up again.

She crouched next to him and hissed quietly, in tones low enough that the pair of Marines also sparring couldn't hear. "Tell me what is wrong."

He glared up at her. Sullen and petulant and hurting, not just from her attack. Her expression softened, and she sighed and sat down cross-legged on the mat instead, pushing against his chest with her hand when he started to rise.

"No, don't get up. Tell me what is wrong."

"Nothing's wrong," he insisted, but he didn't try to get up again. Although he was watching her warily. "Is it?"

And that, there, somehow, told her that he knew. "Nothing is wrong," she told him, slowly, watching his face. He'd left her no room to obliquely reassure him that Michael wasn't a threat to Atlantis, at least not at the moment. If she wanted to say something she would have to say so openly.

"Good." He pushed himself to his feet and went over to put away the sticks, and again she stopped him with a hand on his chest.

"John..." She looked over. The other two had somehow gone when she wasn't looking, perhaps sensing the awkwardness that was sure to follow. He waited until she didn't say anything else, and then he tried to push past her. "No, John, wait. What you saw..."

"What I saw," he turned, now, to confront her. "Was one of my teammates going and fraternizing with the enemy. Giving him god knows what information, comforting the guy who, let's not forgot, tried to feed you to a bug."

And she couldn't argue against that, or at least, not that part of it. "I gave him no information, John," she tried anyway. She hadn't, not anything vital to the security of Atlantis. "I listened to what he had to say, and I told him ... how I felt about the events that occurred while he was with us..."

"How you felt."

That, instantly, she knew, had been the wrong thing to say. She watched the expressionless mask drop away to reveal tight-jawed anger and hurt, and he stepped back from her with the look of a man who might strike out if he didn't walk away. Knowing Sheppard, he would walk off one of the spires in Atlantis before he would hit her. She didn't reach for him this time, didn't force the issue.

"How you felt. About a security risk, sitting right there on the mainland, with no guards, no security, nothing to keep him from firing up that telepathic mojo of his and calling a Wraith cruiser right to our doorstep."

"John!" Teyla forced herself to moderate her tone. "After how the Wraith treated him, after what he said in the bunker, I believe that is the last thing he wants, at least as much as we do."

"Maybe not to pick him up, but what's to prevent him from calling it down here just to get back at us for what we did to him, and then getting out while we're busy killing each other, did you think of that while you were busy getting snuggly with Michael?"

"After what we did to him, if he wanted to exact some kind of payment from us, he would have done it long ago. From the looks of it, he has been there for quite some time, at least since we have arrived on this planet, and he has done nothing to hurt us. And," she added, "He saved my life."

Sheppard went very still, pulling back in on himself again. She could almost feel him pulling the walls up. "He..."

"If he had not pulled me out of the wreckage of that Jumper and applied emergency treatment, you would have had a recovery operation to contend with, not a rescue mission." She didn't tell him about the other scientists. He would only say that there was no proof that Michael had tried to save them, and she wasn't up to try to convincing him otherwise. "Michael saved my life, John, and whether you like it or not, that is not the act of a person who wants a conflict. He only wants to be left alone."

He stared at her for a long, long moment, a moment that stretched out until she was about ready to burst with wanting to ask him questions. What he was thinking, what he was going to do. She made herself be silent. At least until he turned and left, and then she leaned up against the wall and closed her eyes, and willed herself not to cry out of sheer frustration. She hadn't done that since she was a little girl.

There were two missions after that. They didn't talk outside of what was necessary for the mission, at least until Ronon suggested that they have sex and get it over with. Not quite in those words, perhaps, but the implication was there. After that Sheppard seemed to relax, and Teyla took a breath and kept up her side of whatever light conversation they were having at the time.

Afterwards, though, on the balcony outside of the offices, she found him leaning against the railing and staring out at the water.

"John..." she came up next to him, and felt it stabbing at her inside when he flinched away.

"Teyla."

His voice was neutral. They hadn't made up, not really, he had just realized that being obviously angry with her would only draw attention from the others. He was still upset, and he still believed he had seen her in Michael's arms.

Which was only fair, since she had been close to him, and it had been Michael. He hadn't seen perhaps exactly what he thought he'd seen, but it had been close enough to the truth and she didn't want to fight with John about it. She also didn't want to be put into a position where she would have to agree not to see Michael again. Not when she had promised to try to come back.

"I cannot try to fix what is wrong if you will not talk to me," she tried again. She wanted him to talk to her. She wanted their friendship back, she wanted things to be back the way they had been. She wasn't sure how to explain it.

Sheppard only shook his head. "I knew there was something. You had this... look. When you came back, I knew there was something. And I still didn't see this coming." He sounded more angry at himself about that, or maybe just angry.

"I did not know who had rescued me until he came to take me back to the crash site," she said, taking a breath and trying to explain. In some way that she thought he might accept, and maybe if he was reminded that Michael had saved her life he would be less angry with the Wraith. "He kept me asleep while he healed what he could, and then he took me back on a gurney. He said only that he trusted me not to reveal his location..."

"Well, nice to know one of us can trust you."

It was over the line. Teyla drew back, hurt and angry and instantly flushed, and even Sheppard had the look of shocked uncertainty that he usually got when he had said something that went further than he meant to.

"If that is how you truly feel, then perhaps..." she started. She hoped it wasn't how he felt now, but wouldn't have put it outside of the realm of possibility. Not considering it was Michael, and their experiences with the Wraith.

Still, he interrupted her. "That's not what I meant..." Still, not quite the right thing to say.

"Then what did you mean?"

"I just meant..." He swallowed once, then sighed. One sentence had put him on the wrong side of this argument, and it was to his credit that he was at least aware of that. "I just meant that it doesn't... feel right."

Teyla turned and faced him, folding her arms over her chest. She was prepared to wait until dawn if she had to for John to figure out what he did mean and how to say it.

"You were talking to Michael. He slaughtered an entire colony. He did God knows what else on those other worlds to other people to do his Mad Scientist impression, and you're out there for a week making nice with him?"

"I was out there..." Teyla shook her head, turning to stare out at the water. Moonlight, starlight rippled over the surface. It all seemed irrelevant now. So far away.

To his credit, and perhaps because he was still hurting from what he had said earlier, Sheppard stayed silent until she had figured out how to explain what she meant. "I was trying to understand why he was there, what he was doing. Why he had saved my life and then, to all appearances, simply disappeared back into the forest. He wasn't expecting me, but he did not object to my presence, which seemed to indicate that he had nothing to hide. He certainly had no time to hide any experiments he might be conducting." At least, any that recalled to mind the experiments he performed on the Taranans.

Sheppard didn't look any happier about that. "And, what, you ..."

"I talked with him. I treated him as I thought the situation warranted. I was not 'getting snuggly' with him, and I was not..." Could she even have sexual relations with him? "You don't even know if it works that way," she told him, with a rueful little smile.

"Okay, that wasn't a mental picture I wanted," he made a face. "Teyla..."

"Yes, John?"

He was still angry. She watched him struggle for words that made sense, that were calm, over and around the feelings that were stretching tight between them. She wanted to make it easier for him and didn't know how, not when reaching out to him seemed more likely to result in her getting slapped back at the moment.

"I don't like him, all right? I don't trust him. No matter what we've done to him he'd done horrible things to people who never raised a hand against him and that cannot be erased no matter how many times he saves my friend's life."

And that was soft, and there was a look about him that Teyla had seen before that she couldn't (or wouldn't) explain away. She took a breath, let it out again, and nodded. "All right."

"All right?"

Small smile. "All right." And now she did put her hand on his arm, trying to reassure him. "I have not forgotten what he did either, or what he tried to do to me. I am simply trying to give him a chance to be something other than a monster."

He gave her something like a crooked smile, but he didn't pull away. That was something, at least. "I thought you were the one who told me that Wraith are Wraith, and they can't change that."

"Perhaps," she admitted, her smile turning a little more rueful. "But Michael has always been different, at least as far as we have known him. I know of no other Wraith who would have willingly put their life at risk to benefit us, for no greater reward than the resources to leave afterwards and protect himself."

John nodded, but it was pretty clear he didn't feel the same. Saving Teyla's life had more weight to it than that, and was more recent. And even with that, he wasn't prepared to let this go yet. To let the enmity go, perhaps never. Of all people, Teyla could understand that. Even if a part of her wished it could be otherwise.

"I will see you tomorrow," she said, sliding her hand down to pat his hand once or twice. And then, deciding not to press her luck any further than it had already gone, she left.

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